“Your father can be saved,” warned Shimilin. “Would you send him to execution? Tell me where the money is hidden—or when I lift my hand to the window, the soldiers will fire!” “We are ready for death. I commend my soul and the soul of my father to God! Better death than life under the cruelty of a Mongol and the treachery of our Cossacks!” “You will not trust me,” said Shimilin. “I could save you both. Fools! I am ready to risk my own life to save you, yet you will not believe!” He raised his hand to the window. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IV THE PLACE OF THE VOW A NEW conductor boarded the train in the night. He was a big fellow, with a body round as a bear’s and covered with many coats. He wore a big sheepskin cap, and carried a smoking lantern which was made of tin and was square, with a red circular glass in one side, a blue one in the other, and white ones on opposite sides. He held the lantern aloft and studied the sleepers on the shelves, making rainbows in the dim light of the car as he turned his prismatic lantern. Snicking the ice from his whiskers, he waited till the train moved out again, when he promptly lay down in the passage between the sleeping-shelves and began snoring into the red light of the lantern on the floor beside him. Lieutenant Peter Gordon, who was on a lower shelf, was awake with the first glimmer of gray light through the frosted windows. And as he looked out upon the floor of the car, he was startled by the sanguinary face of the new conductor in the red glow of the lantern as it rattled with the jolting of the car. Peter studied the queer figure prone on the floor, and observed the booted feet stretched out toward the cold stove in the corner. Before long the conductor sat up, rubbed his eyes and yawned a chasm of a yawn. He dug into his clothing with a burrowing motion of his arm and brought forth through many strata of coats a watch fit for a giant. He put it to his ear, tilting his great cap to one side, and listened to the ticking. Then he squinted at it in the red light, and having assured himself that the new day had arrived on time, he buried the watch somewhere in Pliocene recesses and hove himself to his feet and attempted to look out of the window.